New Player's Guide Chapter 3: Combat Basics
You are now ready to learn combat and play your first scenario. Within the current scenario (Velikie Luki '42 Tutorial, playing as the Soviets), you are placed in a position to make a push into German occupied territory, first taking the city of Velikie Luki. Looking at your units, you will see units in stacks on a single hex. Up to three units may be stacked in a hex, though units may pass through fully stacked hexes, though they may not complete their movement there. When two or three units are stacked, the combat values shown are the combined CVs for all units in the hex, while the movement points shown is the lowest MP value in the stack. Ground combat has two types of attacks: * Hasty Attack: A hasty attack is performed by units in a single hex against units in an enemy hex. While a hasty attack uses fewer movement points to execute, it comes at the cost of only receiving half of the units' combat value. * Deliberate Attack: A deliberate attack can be performed by any units bordering the target hex (and artillery units which are two hexes away from the target) which have enough movement points to perform the attack. At the moment, you don't have any units in place to perform a successful hasty attack, so we will prepare for a deliberate attack. At the center of the front line, you will see a stack of three units, with anoffensive CV of 2 for full stack. A note about CVs: A unit's CV is rounded down to the nearest decimal, minimum one, unless the unrounded value is zero, as with HQs and air bases. A unit with between 0.1 and 1.9 CV will be shown a "1", so there can be quite a bit of variation to actual combat abilities. Learning how to find these details will come later. Click on that stack. Then, while holding the Shift key, mouse over the friendly hexes to the north and south of the selected stack. You will see all three stacks in those hexes get a purple outline. A purple outline shows that they have enough movement points remaining to perform a deliberate attack, whether or not they are actually in range to do so. Now, with those three hexes selected, shift-right-click the center enemy front line tile, immediately to the west of your three-unit stack. You will see a text box appear at the top of the screen showing the forces of the attackers and defenders, their calculated Combat Values (before and after modifiers such as fort levels and some randomization), any men, artillery, or armored vehicles that have been wounded/damaged or killed/destroyed in the battle, and the action taken by the defending units: * HELD: The unit successfully defended against the attack * SCOUTED: During a hasty attack, there is a chance, largely based on if your attacking CV is less than double that of the target's defending CV, that the attacking units will perform at "reconnaissance in force", resulting in a combat that has no chance of forcing an enemy retreat, but gives fewer casualties on both sides. This can be useful for getting an idea of the strength of an enemy unit before a deliberate attack, and probing for weak points. * RETREATED: The unit retreats to the nearly available friendly hex, unless it is fully surrounded by enemy-controlled hexes. Retreating units suffer additional damage (called attrition) for each hex crossed during the retreat, including men and equipment being captured by the enemy. * ROUTED: The unit retreats multiple hexes into friendly territory, and may not participate in combat until it recovers. If a routed unit is forced into combat without friendly unit in the same hex, it will be shattered. A routed unit's chance to recover is based on its proximity to its HQ unit. * SHATTERED: The unit is removed from the map, some men and equipment may be captured, and the rest returns to the controlling nation's manpower and equipment pools. Essentially think of this as the unit losing any sort of cohesiveness and everyone has to make their way back to friendly territory individually. * SURRENDER: Similar to SHATTERED, but far greater numbers of men and equipment may be captured by the enemy. Chances are, after this combat, you forced the enemy to retreat. If the Show Enemy Hexes option is selected (Map Information toolbar, or hotkey 'e'), the hex will become shaded, instead of red, indicating a pending friendly hex. Pending friendly hexes will become friendly hexes at the end of the turn. At this point, move your three-unit stack into the newly vacated hex. Click on the units to select them, mouse over the empty hex, and right-click. When mousing over the hex, you will see an icon with a number in it. This number is the minimum number of movement points the units will have remaining when they finish their move. From this point, play through the rest of the scenario. It lasts for 10 rounds. Don't worry about winning; take some time to experiment, see what works and what doesn't. As turns progress, both you and Germany will receive reinforcements. If you play well enough, you can manage to push Germany all the way to the west end of the map, but for now try to capture the city of Velikie Luki. After playing your first game, continue on to the next chapter covering Chain of Command. Chapter 4: Chain of Command